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Sloth: The Deadliest Sin
The ‘outlier’ sin is the only one among seven that is the absence of something. Left unchecked, our physical and intellectual sloth conspire to weaken not only our bodies and minds, but our souls.
I never really understood the biggest ‘outlier’ among the Seven Deadly Sins of early Christianity. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it is — I believe — the most complex, insidious, and far-reaching of them all. Until I understood it, I thought lethargy — in a sense, the absence of something, was a far less objectionable conduct when compared with the visible ravages created by the destructive acts associated with greed, envy, pride, wrath, lust and gluttony — the other six.
Sloth’s origins are straightforward enough. The so-called Desert Fathers — a group of ascetic hermits living in Egypt’s Scetes Desert who had an outsized influence over the development of Christianity — concocted the lot of them in order to double down on their faith, putting certain behaviors that the ten commandments didn’t adequately censure beyond the pale. One of these monks, John Cassian, evangelized the practices to the Europeans, where atoning for these transgressive behaviors became part of confessional practice. Medieval Europe’s two greatest authors — Britain’s…
